Hopefully DOS3, but with some major retooling of the armor system, itemization, and a very heavy new look at the setting itself. Not really a fan of Rivellon itself, but since it's their own IP and they brought on a whole lot of new writing talent from working on BG3, there's room for that to be changed.
I honestly hope for anything not DOS-based myself. I don't think it has anything to offer, really. Unfortunately, Swen's taste level and idea of cool is approximately that of an edgy sixteen-year-old boy, and his idea of good mechanics is, uh, bad mechanics. So DOS is quite likely to be what we get.
Rivellon is the worst. It started out as an extremely, exceptionally boring and generic fantasy setting, making stuff like the FR and Greyhawk seem shocking and original by comparison, and WoW's Azeroth basically Salvador Dali levels of crazy. Just absolutely dire zero-imagination stuff, combined that inimitable Dutch/Belgian sense of anti-humour, where they make jokes that are
actively unfunny, something most nations find impossible to achieve (Germans can sometimes access this, but not reliably). The anti-humour serves to destroy any pathos or meaning, very efficiently.
DOS2 particularly managed to make this somehow
significantly worse, by turning into a full on grimdark "
crapsack world" but it's unclear if that was intentional, or just Swen and Jan Van Dosselaer trying to make a "mature and grown-up" game, because they certainly acted and spoke like they had, but man, this crap wouldn't have passed for "mature" or "grown up" when I was 15, let alone in my late 30s. And the same anti-humour bounced around doing damage and undermining any scene which might approach meaning.
The new writers they brought in, who did a near-complete re-write of DOS2 did try, in the dialogue and description to fight back hard against the forces of edgelord-ery and anti-humour, but there was only so much they could do without just fundamentally changing the characters and setting.
The mechanics of DOS1 were extremely poorly-balanced, shockingly so even in a poorly-balanced field, and apart from surfaces and explosions, bland as hell, but they worked. DOS2 just has completely bizarre and stupid mechanics, that aren't even very tactical, because the strategies for most fights are extremely straightforward and repetitive, with the only spanner in the works being a significant number of "GOTCHA!!!"-type mechanics, which are also not very interesting, and extremely cheap, and clearly there because they couldn't find a way to make the normal mechanics not easy to steamroll. Further, some lunatic decided that they need you to upgrade your weapons/armour literally constantly, like this was Diablo, except here you couldn't expect drops, you had to grub for it.
Now you might think "Well BG3 doesn't have any of those flaws, really, surely Swen has learned his lesson?".
Yeah, I wish.
In one of the video interviews before BG3 came out (after having demo'd it in that weird cave/basement-looking place) Swen did, he basically straight up said "Wellllll, D&D and the Forgotten Realms are fine, I guess, but DOS2 had better mechanics and Rivellon is a much better setting" and it's like, jesus wept lol. He is high on his own supply. He is huffing his farts. He is drinking his own Koolaid.
Further in another video interview around the same time, he said after BG3 came out they were going to do two much smaller games, and one of them would be a DOS2-based tactics RPG that they'd already cancelled once. Given how incredibly terrible DOS2's tactics are, and that he's now saying they "back on track to their original plans", I strongly suspect we'll see that.
And we'll probably get a Bioshock Infinite situation.
Reviewers will all act like it's an amazing game and give it extremely high scores and absolutely sing its praises, as will really cult-y fans - and good god, DOS2 has the cultiest cultist fans I've ever seen for any western RPG - only a couple of JRPGs and maybe Undertale have the same (Undertale doesn't really anymore though - but it did for a while). That's not to say if you like DOS2 you're a cultist, to be clear - that's obviously not true! but DOS2 attracts a certain kind of really extreme frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy who is kind of terrifying.
And then, like Bioshock Infinite, 12-18 months later, people will be playing it and going "WTH this is mid as hell and has an awful story, why did people say it was good?" (hopefully they won't also have to say "And it's kind of solidly racist both-sides-ism of a totally unearned kind" as they would with Infinite).
The real harbinger of doom here will be Jan Van Dosselaer. He was in charge of the writing and story for DOS1 and DOS2. But with BG3 he got kinda demoted to "principal writer", with two newer lead writers (Smith and Ding) and a narrative designer (Schick) above him. I suspect though that might have been a deal, because he's been with Larian a long time and clearly shares the same tastes as Swen, so maybe he's going to be back for one of these two games, and my god it's going to be bad if he is. Sorry man, but you should never, ever be in charge of writing direction.
Downers aside, what I'd like to see is Larian write their own setting - preferably sci-fi, just because it's much harder to really go full grimdark with sci-fi - in theory it should be easy, but something about the spectre of Warhammer 40K just wards most people away from going full grimdark in SF settings. Whereas Game of Thrones and Joe Abercrombie and Malazan and so on just lure idiots like sirens on to the rocks of fantasy grimdark.
But yeah, a fresh SF setting, that might be pretty dark but hopefully also pretty wild, would be ideal. I feel like they could do a superb Farscape-type deal as a game.
In Sun Dog, combat was a mistake, and ship-to-ship combat typically involved leaving the gunner position and running around your trader doing emergency repairs mid-battle to make sure your ship didn't get destroyed.
That's basically exactly
FTL by the sound of it, which is heavily Traveller inspired.
